The present invention relates to a voice-synthesizer system for various types of industrial equipment of the type that display visual information to operating personnel.
Various types of industrial process equipment have been designed with panel-type alpha-numeric character displays that utilize standardized character display protocols to display individual characters on, for example, a liquid crystal display, with groups of individual characters defining words or multi-word messages.
In addition to the use of displays that are intended to be read by operating personnel, it is not uncommon for the equipment to also include audio alarm-annunciators to sound an alarm to warn the operating personnel of a selected number of undesired operating conditions. In those types of equipment that utilize audio alarm-annunciators and multi-character displays, the audio alarm annunciates an alarm condition after which the operator(s) read the displayed message. Typically, the audio alarm annunciator will sound a warning for high-priority conditions that require immediate corrective action(s) and also sound for lower-priority conditions that do not require an immediate response from operating personnel. In this situation, it is not uncommon for operating personnel to spend a considerable amount of time addressing lower-priority alarm conditions that do not require immediate attention. Accordingly, system operators must often interrupt the task at hand to address all alarm conditions, including relatively rare high-priority alarms and the many lower-priority alarm conditions that arise. This situation can lead to occasions during which alarms are ignored because of an assumption on the part of the operating personnel that a particular alarm is a lower-priority alarm for which a response can be deferred.
It would be desirable for those industrial control systems that utilize character displays and audio-alarm annunciators to also incorporate a voice synthesizer to announce the alarm conditions in spoken words. In general, existing systems include complex internal computer control systems in which retro-fitting voice-synthesizer devices can be problematic.